Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/228

186 the earth brought forth grass, and trees yielded fruit. Nature was like the setting of a stage, where scenes could be shifted at will. Intelligence brought forth landscapes "even as a picture is produced by the artist." "The grass and the trees grew," not from the ground, but "from out the infinite thought that expressed them." In the creation of the solar system Mrs. Glover saw a complete endorsement of her theory that vegetation lived by Intelligence only: "The Scripture gives no record of solar light until after time had been divided into day and night, and vegetation was formed, showing you light was the symbol of the Life-giving Creator, and not a source of life to the vegetable kingdom. . . . Matter never represented God; geology cannot explain the earth, nor one of its formations."

The animal creation, according to Mrs. Glover's idea, was originally mild and harmless. "Beast and reptile," she said, "were neither carnivorous nor poisonous." Wisdom held dominion over reptiles in those first days, and the savage traits of wild animals to-day are the result of erroneous human thinking. Mortal mind has impressed these qualities into the animal kingdom. It was because they understood this that Moses "made a staff as a serpent," and Daniel feared not the hungry lions. "When immortality is better understood," Mrs. Glover said, "there will follow an exercise of capacity unknown to mortals."

In the story of the creation of man as recorded in Genesis,